SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

[11101]

How so?

If the poster speaks of people that have paid down debt, saved for a house, then in a year or two, many of them will be in the best position any generation has experienced since the Boomers. Cash rich, employed, surplus housing stock everywhere, banks competing for business.

It’s callous to reduce to those terms but the 5 year outlook for anyone with money in the bank is better than it was a year ago. There will be opportunity in the air.

People seem to forget that ‘Boomers’ refers to those who were born just after World War 2. For large swathes of that generation, life was really fcuking hard. Families decimated. Grandparents gone in many cases. Helpful Global economics and a long period of surety was no guarantee at the outset.

You're overlooking one massive factor here...mortgages.

Banks will not be competing for business. That's not what happens when liquidity dries up and defaults rise, aka a recession. They consolidate loan portfolios and stop lending. Even now as governments are effectively underwriting all debt, banks are still reluctant to lend. It doesn't matter if the housing market crashes 50% the vast majority would still need a mortgage, and that's going to become harder to get, with higher deposit requirements and higher interest rates.


Boomers hit earning age in the 1960s. WW2 was a memory by then and the economy experienced unprecedented and until today unmatched growth, with fairly consistent 4-5%+ annual GDP increases until the 1990s.

 

[golden_blunder]

Radio 4 says people in care homes are being certified as dead by doctors over the phone. The doctors haven't seen them, so are reluctant to put covid as the cause of death without evidence. Their treatment must have been minimal. It might make sense to concentrate hospital resources on those with a better chance of recovery, but I find it strange it's happening all over the country with such little discussion.

My mum is in a dementia care home and I’m kinda resigned to the fact that infection is going to get in as their staff is coming and going everyday

 

[Pogue Mahone]

One scientist vs the vast majority of other scientists saying that 18 months is best case scenario which will require a lot of luck. Not saying it isn't possible for it to happen before then and I really hope it does but realistically that person saying September is very much in the minority. I was listening to a micro-biologist on the radio this morning who said he felt it would be 2 years minimum. I guess the main thing is that nobody knows right now but the general time frame we can work from is that on average a vaccine takes over 7 years to develop and get to where it can be mass produced.

A possibility that nobody seems to want to acknowledge is that we may NEVER develop a vaccine that is safe/effective enough to roll out globally. We still haven’t got a vaccine for any other type of coronavirus (e.g. SARS or MERS) that’s good enough to be used on the scale we need. And that’s despite several years of trying.

 

[Regulus Arcturus Black]

3... 2... 1....

Nope, nothing wrong with them slagging off the failure to keep it out of nursing homes as they do, even the Health Ministry here are dismayed at that failure.
50% of deaths over 70 have been from nursing homes. I’ve personally slated that for weeks.
Looking at the other figures though is something they are missing, outside of the nursing homes ones for Denmark too for example, there really is little difference.
But yeah, when there are failures as with Swedens nursing homes, only right to slag them for it.

@Arruda, do you mean critical now mate, or total number that have received ICU? What’s the figure you’re looking at?

 

[balaks]

A possibility that nobody seems to want to acknowledge is that we may NEVER develop a vaccine that is safe/effective enough to roll out globally. We still haven’t got a vaccine for any other type of coronavirus (e.g. SARS or MERS) that’s good enough to be used on the scale we need. And that’s despite several years of trying.

True but a lot of the work that was being done to combat the other types of coronavirus were never finished and just stopped. This will be different simply because this is not going away anytime soon. Having said that we still havent got a vaccine for the common cold virus but I guess thats more down to it's relative mildness and lack of funding and commitment to find one as a result.

 

[unchanged_lineup]

3... 2... 1....

#regulusbatsignal

 

[Pogue Mahone]

True but a lot of the work that was being done to combat the other types of coronavirus were never finished and just stopped. This will be different simply because this is not going away anytime soon.

Based on my limited understanding of vaccine development there are technical challenges to developing a vaccine for an RNA coronavirus that can’t necessarily be solved by devoting a lot of time and effort to them. Obviously, we all hope the scientists can buck the trend here. We really need them to.

 

[711]

My mum is in a dementia care home and I’m kinda resigned to the fact that infection is going to get in as their staff is coming and going everyday

My sister the same GB, and of course you can't even go in and see them. Plus daughter works in one, they've had little in the way of protection, they're having to deal with the infected themselves with no more than advice over the phone, she's almost certain to catch it, and you just can't help worrying.

 

[Pexbo]

Nope, nothing wrong with them slagging off the failure to keep it out of nursing home as they do, even the Health Ministry here are dismayed at that.
50% of deaths over 70 have been from nursing homes. I’ve personally slated that for weeks.
Looking at the other figures though is something they are missing, outside of the nursing homes ones for Denmark too for example, there really is little difference.
But yeah, when there are failures as with Swedens nursing homes, only right to slag them for it.

@Arruda, do you mean critical now mate, or total number that have received ICU?

But is focusing on the nursing homes not missing the massive elephant in the room that the entire reason why almost every other country has been stricter with their lock down and social distancing measures is because it's been recognised that it will be the elderly and vulnerable that will suffer?

Most other countries haven't got special measures in place to specifically protect nursing homes. The protection comes from the entire country social distancing. If Sweden had locked down like everyone else then nursing homes would have been less at risk.

 

[The Firestarter]

#regulusbatsignal

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Nope, nothing wrong with them slagging off the failure to keep it out of nursing homes as they do, even the Health Ministry here are dismayed at that failure.
50% of deaths over 70 have been from nursing homes. I’ve personally slated that for weeks.
Looking at the other figures though is something they are missing, outside of the nursing homes ones for Denmark too for example, there really is little difference.
But yeah, when there are failures as with Swedens nursing homes, only right to slag them for it.

@Arruda, do you mean critical now mate, or total number that have received ICU? What’s the figure you’re looking at?

Nursing homes contain the most elderly people in society. The virus is most dangerous to elderly people. So if the epidemic is being poorly handled in any country, you’re going to see a lot of deaths in nursing homes. The most effective way to prevent deaths in nursing homes is by minimising spread in society as a whole.

 

[Regulus Arcturus Black]

Most other countries haven't got special measures in place to specifically protect nursing homes. The protection comes from the entire country social distancing. If Sweden had locked down like everyone else then nursing homes would have been less at risk.

Most countries have had their nursing homes as ground zero, lockdown or not.
Belgium is one.
Lockdown won’t keep it out if it’s the staff bring it in as it appears to be.
Well, it would, but it’d take much longer than 4 weeks of lockdown as the data from Italy is telling us. Maybe lots of countries will never keep it out? Maybe some actually are better than others which is my personal feeling on it. Sweden are shit at it.

 

[Arruda]

@Arruda, do you mean critical now mate, or total number that have received ICU? What’s the figure you’re looking at?

I was looking at the figure from the worldmeter website. Regardless of it's "now", or total, it doesn't bode well in comparisons, assuming the criteria in European countries are similar. Looking at the Portuguese numbers, in our case I'm almost sure it means now.

 

[Regulus Arcturus Black]

Nursing homes contain the most elderly people in society. The virus is most dangerous to elderly people. So if the epidemic is being poorly handled in any country, you’re going to see a lot of deaths in nursing homes. The most effective way to prevent deaths in nursing homes is by minimising spread in society as a whole.

Absolutely Pogue, no-one is dusputing that.

But Belgium locked down and have been twatted, both in and out of nursing homes so to simply say a country has failed due to not locking down is wrong.
The have failed massively with one aspect, absolutely.

The mere fact that ICU has been constant for 3 weeks, and that winter tummy bug and regular flu which normally ease up around midsummer have dropped off a cliff say that another aspect of the strategy is working.
And I’ll repeat again, this strategy can be kept us for 12 months if need be.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Most countries have had their nursing homes as ground zero, lockdown or not.
Belgium is one.
Lockdown won’t keep it out if it’s the staff bring it in as it appears to be.
Well, it would, but it’d take much longer than 4 weeks of lockdown as the data from Italy is telling us. Maybe lots of countries will never keep it out? Maybe some actually are better than others which is my personal feeling on it. Sweden are shit at it.

If you want an example of a country that is absolutely terrible at keeping coronavirus out of nursing homes, look at Ireland. The vast majority of our clusters are in nursing homes or other residential communities. Thankfully, we’ve been pretty good about stifling spread in society as a whole. Which keeps our overall mortality/ICU admissions relatively low.

To be honest, I don’t think any country has done a brilliant job at keeping the virus out of nursing homes. It’s just not possible. Not with agency staff working in multiple centres and limited supplies of PPE being prioritised for use in acute hospitals.

 

[11101]

A possibility that nobody seems to want to acknowledge is that we may NEVER develop a vaccine that is safe/effective enough to roll out globally. We still haven’t got a vaccine for any other type of coronavirus (e.g. SARS or MERS) that’s good enough to be used on the scale we need. And that’s despite several years of trying.

Not really. We were making progress on a SARS vaccine but it disappeared on its own and the impetus went with it. There were a few promising vaccines that were awaiting various stages of trials at the time. MERS suffers similarly, neither have warranted massive research efforts.

Milestones for a Covid19 vaccine have been reached far sooner. The genome sequence was published 10 days after China acknowledged the virus even existed. SARS took 4 months. Human trials are due to begin this month. By the time a SARS vaccine entered human trials 2 years had passed, the virus had burnt itself out and the epidemic was over.

 

[Regulus Arcturus Black]

I was looking at the figure from the worldmeter website. Regardless of it's "now", or total, it doesn't bode well in comparisons, assuming the criteria in European countries are similar. Looking at the Portuguese numbers, in our case I'm almost sure it means now.

It’s total who have received ICU for Sweden mate, since it began.
Worldometers is a crap site for that, as it is for death days.

We haven’t had an increase in ICU entries for 3 weeks. That curve is as flat as a pancake which I thought was what every country wanted to do when this kicked off, flatten the curve.
Somewhere that curve has been forgotten and all that matters is a death toll in the first 6 weeks of a pandemic which is likely to be with us for a year or more.

 

[Regulus Arcturus Black]

If you want an example of a country that is absolutely terrible at keeping coronavirus out of nursing homes, look at Ireland. The vast majority of our clusters are in nursing homes or other residential communities. Thankfully, we’ve been pretty good about stifling spread in society as a whole. Which keeps our overall mortality/ICU admissions relatively low.

To be honest, I don’t think any country has done a brilliant job at keeping the virus out of nursing homes. It’s just not possible. Not with agency staff working in multiple centres and limited supplies of PPE being prioritised for use in acute hospitals.

Around 450 nursing home deaths here Pogue, almost all in Stockholm.

And as I said earlier even countries that had a lockdown have got it into the nursing homes because people who are locked down are still getting this. IItaly is proof of that when five weeks after lockdown they are still getting 4000 cases a day. So lockdown doesn’t completely stop cases which means without it being completely stopped people who work in nursing homes will still get this and bring it into nursing homes.

Declaring Sweden getting it into an insane amount of Stockholm nursing homes as a “win” for lockdown seems really strange.

And whilst I don’t think this is true for Sweden’s neighboring countries, there have been lots and lots of reports of nursing care home deaths missing from other countries statistics.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Not really. We were making progress on a SARS vaccine but it disappeared on its own and the impetus went with it. There were a few promising vaccines that were awaiting various stages of trials at the time. MERS suffers similarly, neither have warranted massive research efforts.

Milestones for a Covid19 vaccine have been reached far sooner. The genome sequence was published 10 days after China acknowledged the virus even existed. SARS took 4 months. Human trials are due to begin this month. By the time a SARS vaccine entered human trials 2 years had passed, the virus had burnt itself out and the epidemic was over.

I work in pharmaceuticals. So, unfortunately, I’m well aware of the huge rate of attrition of “promising” compounds in early stage development as they get closer to approval. Many a slip twixt cup and lip.

Vaccine development isn’t something I know a whole lot about but - from what I’ve read - this is one of the toughest nuts they will ever have to crack. And we can all think of examples of viruses that we have never managed to develop a vaccine against, despite many years of trying.

 

[Lentwood]

Relax some measures, keep others. Ramp up testing and contact tracing so we can respond very quickly to those who show symptoms and get them and their contacts isolating. Those who can work from home keep working from home. Widespread use of face-masks once enough have been produced and supplied. Contact tracing apps. Try to find the best treatment options. Then hope for the best.

Not sure what more there is that could be done.

Maybe staggered easing of restrictions for those statistically proven to be less vulnerable?

 

[Hound Dog]

A possibility that nobody seems to want to acknowledge is that we may NEVER develop a vaccine that is safe/effective enough to roll out globally. We still haven’t got a vaccine for any other type of coronavirus (e.g. SARS or MERS) that’s good enough to be used on the scale we need. And that’s despite several years of trying.

If the 18 + month estimation is correct than it does not make that much of a difference as we will develop herd immunity by then.

Anyone believing people en masse will stay locked down for a year plus is deluded.

 

[nimic]

Speaking of Sweden, a Swedish author/journalist, Elisabeth Åsbrink, had an interesting theory that Sweden was peace-damaged. A quick google shows that she's been saying it in Sweden, but she was also recently interviewed by Norwegian state TV (we're always somewhat interested in what's going on in Sweden).

The general idea is that Sweden was not psychologically prepared for this disaster due to the general lack of natural disasters, wars, famine, etc. in Sweden for a good long while now. Compare that to the other Nordic countries which were all somewhat traumatized by WW2, for example (except for Iceland, but that's a funny little country).

She also said Swedes are perhaps too trusting of the authorities, which is funny because trust in the authorities is something Norway has scored "highly" on for years.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Around 450 nursing home deaths here Pogue, almost all in Stockholm.

And as I said earlier even countries that had a lockdown have got it into the nursing homes because people who are locked down are still getting this. IItaly is proof of that when five weeks after lockdown they are still getting 4000 cases a day. So lockdown doesn’t completely stop cases which means without it being completely stopped people who work in nursing homes will still get this and bring it into nursing homes.

Declaring Sweden getting it into an insane amount of Stockholm nursing homes as a “win” for lockdown seems really strange.

Your last sentence doesn’t really make sense to me. I’m not talking about a “win” for anything based on Sweden’s experience. I’m just saying you can’t put nursing home infections/fatalities to one side, when assessing the overall effectiveness of a government’s strategy. Which you seem to be keen to do here. If anything, nursing home residents are the canary in the coal mine.

 

[RK]

I've been experimenting with data, looking at the virus spreading last month in London, specifically after 14th March when there were ~300 confirmed cases until 20th March by which time there were ~1600 confirmed cases.
Before the earlier date there weren't really enough cases. After the later date, it seemed to gradually homogenise.
Not really drawing conclusions. There's plenty of footnotes if interested.

 

[Alabaster Codify7]

Maybe staggered easing of restrictions for those statistically proven to be less vulnerable?

This is what I'm expecting and what makes at least some sense. I'm 37, for example. My employer has been great so far in terms of WFH but there are departments within my employer that havent had that luxury due to the nature of the work they do - some of them are likely to be considered vulnerable in some way, even if just based on age. I am expecting, by late May, to have to go into the office 2-3 days a week (WFH the rest) because it's simply not fair on those who have no choice. I'm sure everyone will be judged on a case-by-case basis on their age and health, but I will be one of the very first expected to start slowly goign back to the office.

 

[Feed Me]

A possibility that nobody seems to want to acknowledge is that we may NEVER develop a vaccine that is safe/effective enough to roll out globally. We still haven’t got a vaccine for any other type of coronavirus (e.g. SARS or MERS) that’s good enough to be used on the scale we need. And that’s despite several years of trying.

So how does something like SARS stop / die down to a level that it doesn’t really impact people day to day anymore?

 

[Lentwood]

22 Swedish scientists have lambasted the government for their “failed” tactic.

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/...digheten-har-misslyckats-med-sin-coronastrate

One key point I have taken out of that though is the chief epidemiologist highlighted the fact that they believe this is a medium-long term strategy

They might look very bad if the rates of infected people/people who have died in the next two months trends up against the rest of the world or they might look like they made a great decision if the rates of infections/deaths are broadly similar to the rest of the world without such severe economic consequences

As I alluded to earlier, what we’re doing isn’t a medium or long term strategy. It’s a holding measure whilst we work out that strategy

 

[Pogue Mahone]

If the 18 + month estimation is correct than it does not make that much of a difference as we will develop herd immunity by then.

Anyone believing people en masse will stay locked down for a year plus is deluded.

We’ll most likely swap back and forth between lockdown and less extreme social isolation measures until we have a vaccine or herd immunity. I’d say there’s about as much chance of having a vaccine in 18 months as there is of getting herd immunity over the same period of time without a vaccine.

 

[Di Maria's angel]

813 deaths today. We'd have killed millions if we had gone with herd immunity. I've been out of this thread for a while. I wonder if those who were in support of herd immunity and this stupidly delayed lockdown have admitted it was insane.

 

[blue blue]

Honestly, from what I've seen, the information coming out of the Chinese medical community and being published to the world at the beginning of January seems to of been first class. To a point where I doubt any western country would do any better.

Its flu season, there's god knows how many cases of pneumonia doing the rounds, a perfectly normal thing. Yet they managed to identify something odd about 20 or so cases in 3 separate hospitals in Wuhan, identified they could all be linked to the same food market and this is what has raised the alarm. I dunno what is involved in sequencing the genome of a virus, but they manged to identify it was a completely new virus, sequence it, and publish everything they knew about it to Lancet in a report on 11th January. Honestly, my impression of China has quite improved since this started.

There was a Governor in Wuhan who tried playing it down at the beginning (sound familiar?) and this is what the western world seem to be concentrating on when they say China covered it up.

There is very little we know now that wasn't already known at the end of January, yet there was still world leaders in March, including our own, trying to play it down and hold back any restrictions. Can't blame China for that.

Well how did they manage to contain SARS so much better and why haven't they done so this time?

 

[Regulus Arcturus Black]

The general idea is that Sweden was not psychologically prepared for this disaster due to the general lack of natural disasters, wars, famine, etc. in Sweden for a good long while now. Compare that to the other Nordic countries which were all somewhat traumatized by WW2, for example (except for Iceland, but that's a funny little country).

How many survivors of WWII in the Nordics? It finished 75 years ago.

 

[Lentwood]

So how does something like SARS stop / die down to a level that it doesn’t really impact people day to day anymore?

SARS is less infectious/harder to transmit, in answer to that specific question

In general though, the only long term solution is herd immunity. A vaccine is a manufactured method of creating and accelerating herd immunity

 

[Pogue Mahone]

So how does something like SARS stop / die down to a level that it doesn’t really impact people day to day anymore?

Containment strategy. Identify and isolate cases as soon as they arise. Which is easier to do as SARS is only contagious when people are symptomatic and symptomatic people tend to be extremely sick.

 

[balaks]

813 deaths today. We'd have killed millions if we had gone with herd immunity. I've been out of this thread for a while. I wonder if those who were in support of herd immunity and this stupidly delayed lockdown have admitted it was insane.

I think we will still go for herd immunity but in a relatively managed (and therefore very lengthy) way - nothing else for it other than a vaccine happening really.

 

[nimic]

How many survivors of WWII in the Nordics? It finished 75 years ago.

Yeah, that's not really the point though, is it? It still most definitely had a lasting impact on the national psyche. Never again, and all that.

 

[Bojan11]

SARS died down before they could even launch a vaccine. Why would someone invest money into something that had died out? Thankfully with SARS, China acted very quickly.

This is totally different scenario and it’s on a bigger scale. The demand is going to be huge as this has impacted too many countries for it to die out.

 

[FootballHQ]

This. If we could find some drugs that could treat those who are actually infected, that could tide us over until the vaccine.

Just read in the independent that Ireland expects restrictions until the vaccine is found. That is going to impact the economic system hugely.

Isn't there some promising talk on the ebola drug. There certainly needs to be a sticky plaster for the summer months just to give us all a bit of respite so hopefully it remains effective when the treatment groups gets scaled up.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

One key point I have taken out of that though is the chief epidemiologist highlighted the fact that they believe this is a medium-long term strategy

They might look very bad if the rates of infected people/people who have died in the next two months trends up against the rest of the world or they might look like they made a great decision if the rates of infections/deaths are broadly similar to the rest of the world without such severe economic consequences

As I alluded to earlier, what we’re doing isn’t a medium or long term strategy. It’s a holding measure whilst we work out that strategy

If nothing else, the rest of the world should be pleased that Sweden adopted this strategy. We need a control group. We learn very little when everyone takes the same approach.

 

[Arruda]

It’s total who have received ICU for Sweden mate, since it began.
Worldometers is a crap site for that, as it is for death days.

We haven’t had an increase in ICU entries for 3 weeks. That curve is as flat as a pancake which I thought was what every country wanted to do when this kicked off, flatten the curve.
Somewhere that curve has been forgotten and all that matters is a death toll in the first 6 weeks of a pandemic which is likely to be with us for a year or more.

Yeah, I wouldn't put much trust in those specific numbers. It's still a number significantly bigger than our total ICU though. So you're saying your ICU units are stable, i.e., admissions are balanced with recoveries/deaths and there's no concern of overload yet?

Good news indeed if true, but given your bias on this since the early days I'm a bit hesitant to trust what you say (rather the selection of opinions you chose to base your knowledge on).

My bet is still that we will never see the long term impact of Sweden's policy because it will be changed to something more similar to the rest of Europe far before that "long term" comes.

 

[11101]

I work in pharmaceuticals. So, unfortunately, I’m well aware of the huge rate of attrition of “promising” compounds in early stage development as they get closer to approval. Many a slip twixt cup and lip.

Vaccine development isn’t something I know a whole lot about but - from what I’ve read - this is one of the toughest nuts they will ever have to crack. And we can all think of examples of viruses that we have never managed to develop a vaccine against, despite many years of trying.

We've never come remotely close to the effort going into this one, though.

That's not a guarantee at all but you can't use past examples here. Everything is new.